Barbara Lynn Part 32

Barbara. I've made up my mind to go."

"Then you will blacken both your souls, and such stains won't wash out."

"What do you mean?" asked Lucy, turning her face away.

"You know what I mean. You're letting your mind run after a man that's not your husband. The Bible calls it by a black name, in thought as well as deed." Barbara lifted her sister's face between her hands, and looked at it for a moment. "Lucy," she continued, "you've always been proud of your fair skin and your white body, but that sort of mind, the mind you're letting yourself get, is ugly--ugly as a toad."

Lucy twisted herself away with repulsion.

"You've a bonny way of putting things," she replied haughtily, but her lips quivered. She abhorred toads. From being a child, the sight of them had filled her with loathing; they seemed too ugly to have been created.

And now Barbara said her mind was becoming like one.

"You don't understand," she cried. "You're so high and mighty you couldn't love a man as I love Joel. If you did you'd find a kindlier name for it than saying it's like something that turns you sick to look at it."

Could she have seen her sister's face just then she would have been dumbfounded by the change that pa.s.sed over it. Throat and cheek and chin became suffused with a pa.s.sionate glow, and her lips quivered. But in a moment the flood sank back again, leaving her pale and weary-eyed.

"We've had a warning set us since we were born," she said. "I mean great-granny. Neither of us would like to grow old in her way."

"I never should. But you might, Barbara, for everyone says that you're her living picture. And your heart doesn't come far short of hers for hardness."

Barbara winced, and Lucy, ever ready to make amends for her sharp words, grasped her sister's hand.

"Don't heed me," she said, "I'm beside myself. There's no fear of either of us following in great-granny's steps."

"She let her mind stray where it had no right to," continued Barbara.

"And you know what comfort it brought her. She grew to hate her husband, and she cared nothing for her children. But her life was loveless and a blank; still, she had to give her heart to something; so must all men and women. We're made that way and can't alter it. You know where she gave her heart--it's in her money-bags."

A picture flashed across Lucy's mind of the sight she had seen when she had looked through the door on the night of the wake long ago. She remembered with curious distinctness the stealthy movements of the thin old hands, as they counted the coins. Another scene rose before her; she saw Cringel Forest, and the dell where she and Joel used to meet. She saw it in summer-time, gay with blue-bells; she saw it again in winter.

She thought how she and Joel had met there only a few hours ago. Come spring, come autumn, still she loved and was loved. Back swung her mind to the old woman in the great bed, giving up her soul to the h.o.a.rding of money. Could this last scene be the outcome of such an one as that of the morning? She saw herself old and grey--the beauty of life and its warmth fled; and dead her heart to all joy in the sun and the flowers; gone the sympathy of her soul with other souls; hardened into indifference the power of loving and careless of being loved. Could her soul grow like that? like her great-grandmother's?

"You're havering," she said. "I'm no more like her than I'm like a corby-crow."

Still she was ill at ease.

"Won't you go away home now?" said Barbara.

Lucy had half a mind to say that she would not go. But her blood had cooled, and her reason began to rea.s.sert itself. She was dominated by her sister's will and mortally afraid of the long dark track into Girdlestone Pa.s.s. She rose and drew her cloak closer around her.

"If Joel dies," she said, tears filling her eyes, "you'll have it on your conscience that you kept us apart when we might have given each other some cheer to carry us along our dark ways."

"Lucy, Lucy," cried Barbara, "put Joel out of your head. You've got a good husband, better no woman ever had. Can't you give all your love to him? Make him happy. You'll be happy then yourself. You'll find life worth living, better worth living than great-grandmother's has been; better, far better than mine. Mine's a lonely life, Lucy. There'll never be home and husband for me. But, down at the mill-house yonder, love is waiting for you. For your own sake, for Peter's sake, for Joel's sake, too, cleave to the man you've taken for better and worse."

"You should have married him yourself," replied Lucy, with a somewhat uneasy glance.

"It was not I that Peter chose for his wife," said Barbara simply.

Just then the herd brought a message from Mistress Lynn to know how much longer Barbara was going to linger at the cave.

"Tell her I've something to do that'll keep me here awhile," replied she.

Lucy bade her sister good-night and went away with the herd. She no longer wanted to fly to the sick bed of the man she loved. Weariness succeeded her pa.s.sion of the morning and excitement of the night.

Barbara always had this effect upon her sister. When she opened her heart to her, Barbara put it in a cleansing fire, and, though the process might be painful, it was morally purifying.

When Lucy and Tom had gone, Barbara put her hands to her head, and lifted the locks that lay so heavily upon her brow. Then she stirred the peats into flame. Her face was very white, and looked suddenly old.

All the time that she had been reasoning with Lucy she had been reasoning with herself. She had dealt with herself so severely that she was now ready to give that which conscience demanded.

She opened the oak chest. There lay her few treasures--books which Peter had given her, that she cherished more than she would have done jewels.

She caught her lip between her teeth, but the hesitation was mental, not moral. Like Lucy, she was seeing visions.

She saw herself sitting in the school-room, reading these books, feeding her hungry mind upon the feast that they spread for her. But they were all a.s.sociated with Peter, she had read them in the light of his mind, he had shared them with her. She could not look at them without, at the same time, seeing the face of her dearly-loved master.

Then she saw herself growing old, with haunted eyes, with disappointed heart, longing for that which could never be, and soured by the denial.

Then she saw herself as she meant to be. She was free, because her own soul's master. She was full, because she had renounced; she loved still, but with no desire for recompense, no thought of return, giving out perpetually like the sun, but not receiving.

To attain such a height she must cut off her right hand and pluck out her right eye. She must set her face firmly in the direction she meant to go. It would be a road of toil, loneliness, sacrifice. She must never cast so much as a glance at that other path, with all its alluring lights and gorgeous flowers, which yet smelt of death.

She lifted the books one by one, and laid them on the fire. The white pages grew luminous, the black letters grew blacker, a splash, like blood, blotted them out; they rolled up like a scroll and fell to ashes.

Peter Fleming came to the cave on his way home; for he saw the light.

Joel was better, and as Timothy was remaining behind at the Shepherd's Rest with him, there was no reason why he should stay.

Barbara did not hear the shuffle of his feet on the gra.s.s; and unknown to her he was a witness to her action of burning her books. He stood for a moment, hesitated whether to speak, then stole away, as though he had been prying into a secret chamber that his eyes had no right to see.

He knew that Barbara would come no more to the night-school. He understood her reasons, and bitterly reproached himself for the sorrow that he had brought upon her. He thought of her fine soul and deplored the narrowing and stifling of her intellect, that must follow this deliberate cutting off of herself from such sources of life.

Yet he felt exalted too. In spite of all, he was lifted up by the knowledge of her strength. She seemed to rise and fill the night with her spreading hair, and wide blue eyes, an embodiment of the power of love, which holds all human hearts in the hollow of its immortal hands.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SHEPHERD'S REST

Joel Hart sat on a bench, staring at the fire in the kitchen of the Shepherd's Rest. Timothy Hadwin was bending over a basket of moss and late mountain flowers, dissecting them with a small scalpel, while he held a magnifying gla.s.s in his left hand through which he continually peered. The good dame of the inn was spinning, and the whirr of the wheels' rapid turning made a pleasant hum in the room, like the buzzing of bees. Her good man had gone to the nearest market town on business.

Outside a cold white mist hugged the fells. Little could be seen but a patch of monotonous landscape in front of the inn, and nothing heard save the thunder of the beck which was in spate.

Joel was silent, preoccupied with his thoughts or else sunk in a melancholy mood. Timothy looked at him from under his mild brows, then took a pinch of snuff, and leaning back in his chair said:

"You'll soon be well enough to go home, Joel."

There was no answer. Either the young man had not heard, or he did not want to talk.

"Aye, he's gotten on gaily," said the inn-keeper's wife, a little woman with beady black eyes and a smile that could be both kindly and malicious. "He owes his life to you, Master Hadwin. You couldn't have treated him better if he'd been your own son. But he wants waking up now. Come, come, young gentleman, look as though you were glad to be sitting in Jamie Brown's warm kitchen, and not lying cold and stark in the kirk-garth."